Unreal Photos From Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic Expedition

Beginning on Aug. 8, 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton led a crew of 27 Englishmen to Antarctica in an attempt to make the first land crossing.

The expedition almost didn't happen, as Shackleton offered his ships, stores, and services to his country the night before World War I began, but the Royal Navy and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill wanted the journey to proceed.

Australian photographer Frank Hurley brought 40 pounds of color-photo equipment on the onerous journey and would have to dive into three feet of icy seawater to salvage cases of glass negative plates from their wrecked ship.

Good thing he did, because the expedition became one of the earliest examples of color photography.

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This slide show makes the whole thing seem easier: The men wound up carrying the lifeboats a couple hundred miles to open water, then they rowed towards the nearest known island, which was anoterh few hundred miles away. They turned two of the lifeboats into a makeshift camp, and Shackleton set out towards the nearest island with a village... that was 800 miles in open ocean with limited navigation equipment. They landed on the wrong side of the island and had to essentially climb a mountain to get to the village. A few weeks later, he was able to get a rescue ship to find his crew.